Chapter 8

THE NEUTRAL POINT.

What had taken place? Whence proceeded this strange intoxication whose
consequences might have proved so disastrous? A little forgetfulness on
Ardan's part had done the whole mischief, but fortunately M'Nicholl was
able to remedy it in time.

After a regular fainting spell several minutes long, the Captain was the
first man to return to consciousness and the full recovery of his
intellectual faculties. His first feelings were far from pleasant. His
stomach gnawed him as if he had not eaten for a week, though he had
taken breakfast only a few hours before; his eyes were dim, his brain
throbbing, and his limbs shaking. In short, he presented every symptom
usually seen in a man dying of starvation. Picking himself up with much
care and difficulty, he roared out to Ardan for something to eat. Seeing
that the Frenchman was unable or unwilling to respond, he concluded to
help himself, by beginning first of all to prepare a little tea. To do
this, fire was necessary; so, to light his lamp, he struck a match.

But what was his surprise at seeing the sulphur tip of the match blazing
with a light so bright and dazzling that his eyes could hardly bear it!
Touching it to the gas burner, a stream of light flashed forth equal in
its intensity to the flame of an electric lamp. Then he understood it
all in an instant. The dazzling glare, his maddened brain, his gnawing
stomach--all were now clear as the noon-day Sun.

"The oxygen!" he cried, and, suddenly stooping down and examining the
tap of the air apparatus, he saw that it had been only half turned off.
Consequently the air was gradually getting more and more impregnated
with this powerful gas, colorless, odorless, tasteless, infinitely
precious, but, unless when strongly diluted with nitrogen, capable of
producing fatal disorders in the human system. Ardan, startled by
M'Nicholl's question about the means of returning from the Moon, had
turned the cock only half off.

The Captain instantly stopped the escape of the oxygen, but not one
moment too soon. It had completely saturated the atmosphere. A few
minutes more and it would have killed the travellers, not like carbonic
acid, by smothering them, but by burning them up, as a strong draught
burns up the coals in a stove.

[Illustration: "THE OXYGEN!" HE CRIED.]

It took nearly an hour for the air to become pure enough to allow the
lungs their natural play. Slowly and by degrees, the travellers
recovered from their intoxication; they had actually to sleep off the
fumes of the oxygen as a drunkard has to sleep off the effects of his
brandy. When Ardan learned that he was responsible for the whole
trouble, do you think the information disconcerted him?